2.1.7-Treblemirinlens
Brick!Club 2.1.7 Napoleon In A Good Humor and 2.1.8 The Emperor Puts A Question To The Guide Lacoste Hey Brick!Club! Everyone hanging in there? I am so bad at keeping up with Brick!Club posts over the weekend. If I try to cover everything I missed I’ll never get caught up, but I’ve spent the past few chapters frustrated with how Napoleon is being depicted so let’s go with that. (Again, I have very little background knowledge on Napoleon/Waterloo/etc.; I’m making these observations 99% based on what I am getting from these chapters.) Can somebody help me out with how Napoleon was such a brilliant military leader? This is what I’m getting: *It’s been drilled into our heads by this point how much Napoleon relies on his artillery *It’s heavily raining the night before the battle *Napoleon is cheerfully chatting and joking with the troops and officers in the midst of the pouring rain He doesn’t seem to even consider alternate strategies, just starts the battle later in order to give the ground a bit more time to dry, and it still isn’t dry enough: “the slight effect of the bombs that fell within the English lines, burying themselves in the soil softened by the rain and only succeeding in making volcanoes of mud, so that the explosion was changed into a splash” I can understand him being cheerful to keep spirits up, but we’re also presented with examples of how this was within his normal character which leaves the whole situation reeking of arrogance. Especially in chapter 8 where we find: “Napoleon was accustomed to look upon war fixedly; he never made figure by figure the tedious addition of details; the figures mattered little to him, provided they gave this total: Victory; though beginnings went wrong he was not alarmed at it, he who believed himself master and possessor of the end; he knew how to wait, believing himself beyond contingency, and he treated destiny as an equal treats an equal. He appeared to say to Fate: thou would’st not dare.” And then at the end of the chapter he prematurely sends off a courier to announce that he’d won the battle. I’m left wondering how much of the success of previous battles under Napoleon had to do with the assistance of Berthier http://brickclub.wikia.com/wiki/Miscellaneous#Doeskin-pantaloons_on_the_Battle_of_Waterloo. In other parts of these two chapters… We’re presented with a dangerous sunken road! A traveler and a peasant died there on separate occasions! The sunken road is practically invisible until you reach it! Also: Napoleon’s guide is described as hostile and probably treacherous. This can’t end badly. Commentary Pilferingapples I also haven’t seen anything in these pages to make me awesomed by Napoleon’s military brillilance? He seems….pretty awful,actually, depending on his artillery, eating casually while his soldiers go hungry, and taking his own dear sweet time about the attack. And— isn’t Hugo being kind of sympathetic to the guy here? I mean, is this another of Hugo’s ironic things, where he talks about how great Napoleon was but then goes “HAHAHA REALLY THO NO”? …I suspect it is not. And I know I am probably not capable of being really fair about him, since I disagree with, well, everything he ever stood for or tried to do (although thanks for the ports, Napoleon! Smooth!) , buy I AM READING POSITIVE INTERPRETATIONS OF HIS GENIUS HERE and they DO NOT SEEM GENIUS. Laissezferre (reply to Pilferingapples) Yeah, I kind of got the same vibe. These chapters are supposed to enlighten us on Napoleon’s actions on that fateful day, but to me, he just became more of an enigma. Why the hell are you so happy, Nappy? What have you got up your sleeve? What are you planning to do?!! The chapters only present us this: that Napoleon was very sure of his success. In fact, he didn’t even entertain the idea of a loss. He went about the day with a single thought: Victory. He was “gay as a lark”, in good humor, single-minded, and result-oriented. He didn’t care for massive loss of troops as long as it contributed to his goal: the defeat of the English and their allies. But going back to one of the purposes of the Waterloo section, I suppose if I were Marius Pontmercy, I would admire Napoleon, in a way. I can imagine Marius reading up on Waterloo in the public library and having fevers as he read about how Napoleon sat straight on his saddle while the battle commenced, how the beginning went on exactly as he planned, how he sat on the ground, made a makeshift table and discussed strategy with his generals. He simply is fascinating, no matter your side on the war. I think as we read about good old Nappy here, we have to remember how Marius would have reacted to it. Would the account he read be presented in the same way as we read it, or did he have more biased sources? How would he have taken to Ohain? Surely, he didn’t think that Napoleon annoyed God, so what reason could he have come up with for Napoleon’s loss?